Unity In The Faith ----- Coronavirus

Unity In The Faith ----- Coronavirus

As a normal believer who has seen thousands of individual healings, including my own healing from an incurable disease, I saw two schools of thought among the churches around the world, as I have been reading widely about the responses of churches.

Though it is not explicitly contended, both schools of thought are actually condemning each other.

School 1: Continue to trust God and meet together as a church. We believe in divine healing and we are not afraid.

School 2: Practise wisdom and stop meeting together. Do online teaching and gather in small groups. We are not afraid. We just want to be careful and submit to the local government.

School 1 will condemn School 2 for a lack of faith and not living out the Word of God. On the other hand, School 2 will condemn School 1 for a lack of wisdom and social responsibility.

Who is right and who is wrong? Well, the one who is wrong is the one who condemns the other.

I count myself pretty radical when it comes to divine healing. I wrote a book on it. I live it out as much as I can. I take risk with my own life many times because I have to walk the talk. My wife knows I'm pretty extreme in this area and she gets upset with me occasionally because of her love and concern for me.

You probably know which school I belong to. However, there shouldn't be condemnation against one another, for we are the same Body ----- growing in the Unity of the Faith.

By trying to justify why your church is not meeting together or why your church is continuing with the meeting is to reveal a lack of identity and confidence in who you are before Him. A lot of pastors struggle with identity because they have a lot of people looking up to them to lead, and it's not easy to make decisions in times like this.

Personally, I believe that the decision should go hand in hand with your conscience and conviction because neither school of thought is wrong. If we shipwreck our conscience, we shipwreck our faith (1 Timothy 1:19).

If our conscience and conviction are to stop gathering, then should we decide to gather because of other external pressures, the church will be in trouble. Without faith, you cannot be protected from the fiery darts of the evil one (Eph 6:16).

If our conscience and conviction are to continue gathering, then should we decide to back off because of other external pressures, the church will fail to be the light and the supernatural force as a living testimony to the world, because we are supposed to be the answer and the hope of glory.

Whichever you choose, don't shipwreck your conscience and faith. Don't slam one church over the other. And don't preach at the pulpit as though one school is right, because that's condemning the other.

P.S: I especially dislike people using Scriptures to justify their preference. We have become too religious that we are trying to bend the Scriptures to justify our actions.

P.P.S: In Singapore, we can't gather above 250 pax as it is the law of the government and it is right to submit to the authorities (Romans 13:1-3). But it is a good time to re-think church. We can certainly gather in 10 groups of 25, or 25 groups of 10.